Great ideas for investment opportunities can often be found when reviewing the investment decisions of great investors. When Barron’s reported on 19 mutal funds that have beaten famed mutual fund manager Bill Miller over the past 15 years, I decided to take a closer look at the holdings of these top fund managers. Below I list out the 20 funds with links to their detailed mutual fund information offerings and the list of their top 25 holdings as reported by Morningstar:

In addition to beating Bill Miller’s performance over the past 15 years, I discovered that FPA Capital, Fidelity Low-Priced Stock, Calamos Growth A, Columbia Acorn Z, Muhlenkamp, Hotchkis and Wiley Small Cap Value I, Janus Small Cap Value, Neuberger Genesis, and Wasatch Core Growth also outperformed Miller’s Legg Mason Value Trust in the past five and ten year periods. Looking at the ten and five year performance records in addition to the fifteen year performance period helps eliminate funds that outperformed Bill Miller due to just short periods of high performance.

I also quickly examined the investment philosophy of these funds. Calamos Growth, Federated Kaufmann, Hartford Capital Appreciation, and Mairs and Power Growth are primarily large-cap growth funds. Columbia Acorn and Wasatch Core Growth are invested in mid- and small- cap growth stocks. DFA U.S. Micro and Laudus Rosenberg U.S. Small Cap are both quant funds focusing on small companies. Muhlenkamp and Legg Mason Value Trust are large-cap value funds. Third Avenue Value is a blended value fund, while Merrill Lynch Value Opportunities is a mid-cap value fund. Fidelity Low-Priced Stock, FPA Capital, Hearthland Value, ICM Small Company, Hotchkis and Wiley Small Cap Value I, Janus Small Cap Value, Neurberger Genesis, Laudus Rosenberg U.S. Small, and Skyline Special Equities invest in small-cap value stocks. Not surprisingly, most of the top funds are value oriented funds.

I took a look at what some of the top value funds have been doing. FPA appears to be adding cash into Treasury Notes. I noticed that William Nasgovitz of Heartland added to his position in Stewart and Stevenson Services (SVC). Robert McDorman of ICM Small Company added to his position in Scottish Re Group (SCT). Muhlenkamp seems to be adding a strong concentration in financial stocks including Capital One Financial, Allstate, American International Group, and Citigroup. H & W added a new position, Mercury Interactive (MERQ). However, it looks like they added this stock after its recent scandal which sent it to the pink sheets. Janus Small Cap Value upped their position in Kaydon (KDN). Bill Miller recently added Sprint Nextel (S) and Expedia (EXPE) to his portfolio. I’ll be visiting this list later in the year to see what other new purchases these top fund managers make.

4 thoughts on “Spying On the Top Mutual Fund Stock Picks”

I often times use this technique to imulate the best funds. I did not know until last week that hedge funds with greater than 100M had to register their holdings every three months with the SEC. I have used the sec.gov site to download specific hedge fund holdings. I look particularly at their largest holdings and the largest dollar purchases by comparing two quarters of information.

AlaBill, which hedge funds do you monitor? I know of a quicker and easier way to track institutional investors.

Everyone: If you have any additional mutual funds or institutions that you recommend monitoring because of their excellent track record, please let me know about them. I’ll put together a list of institutional investors that value investors should monitor for a future post.

Here is a site that might fit into what you are looking for called Fundmojo: http://www.fundmojo.com. It allows me to see the trends of top holdings in a fund and provides dynamic report on top stock holdings across sectors and my favorable funds which is prett cool…

Johnny, thanks for letting me know about Fundmojo. The site looks fairly new. I hope they expand the info they provide on holdings to also include information beyond the top ten holdings. I’d be most interested in tracking new holdings.